Time to let loose?

The pros and cons of really going for it.

One martini…

A missed opportunity? / Image: Wrexham AFC

Wrexham borrows as much from American culture as it lends its own these days. For every one of our Transatlantic cousins googling “iechyd da”, there is a Welshman somewhere sipping Four Walls in front of Disney+.

Five years on, we’re still learning about one another: Swapping phrases and ideas to the point where we might as well be exchanging copies of the Wrexham Leader for the New Yorker.

That’s largely a good thing. But it does feel like our squad might be taking one American-coined phrase a little too seriously at the moment.

It was famous Murica writer James Thurber who apparently reeled off the aphorism: ‘One martini is just right. Two is too many. Three is never enough.’

As insightful as this might be for any Turf-dwellers (substituting martini with Madri, of course) aiming to avoid a morning with their heads plunged in the toilet bowl, it is remarkably less useful for our team: Who are earning their wages playing a game where the whole point is to indulge a little more than the rival group in the bar.

Nonetheless, Parky’s lads are resolutely sticking to the ‘one and one only’ principle. Even when the most delicious chances are placed in front of them, they refuse (even if their faces are visibly tinged with regret in the moments after they let the opportunity go begging).

This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if we’d racked up a long list of 1-0 victories. But as this season has shown, one goal is rarely enough to earn all three points at this level. It’s only worked once - at home to Oxford - and this hesitancy to let loose is now making good results feel a lot worse than they actually are.

Saturday’s draw at Middlesbrough is the perfect case in point. Before kick-off, many Reds would have kissed your feet if you’d promised them a point. But when the final whistle blew, there was an undeniable tinge of regret hanging heavier from Red shirts than the polished-off parmos.

Kieffer Moore needs to put that header away - and his failure to do so is the latest in a growing list of examples in which Wrexham could have turned one point into three if they’d just thrown the dice a little more.

Parky is not a gambling man: More like the kind of chap who puts $1 on Red and $1 on Black when he is dragged to the casinos on those end-of-season Vegas trips. And diverting from his dependable approach now - when we’re matching the best teams in the division who will probably be in the Premier League by spring - could potentially be an own goal of Jon Walters magnitude.

Parky’s safe pair of hands are what guided us to the promised land and it seems sensible to trust the system. His ability to keep a cool head when the rest of us can’t is the reason why we are where we are. But when we keep getting so close, so often, at such a high level, it is only human to wonder: What would happen if we really started going for it?

In any case, this dilemma will fix itself on Tuesday. Hesitancy isn’t an option in the Carabao Cup, with any games still level after 90 minutes going directly to a penalty shootout. And nobody ever wants that.

The added prospect of taking home the ‘Best Team in Wales’ title and the extra bite in the air from the terraces will also force this team - consciously or not - to play more on the edge than perhaps they have been.

This is go hard or go home time. And it’s going to be good to watch.

COYR.